Steven Adler Tells All
Many musicians in the prime of their sobriety will tell you that getting kicked out of the band was the greatest thing that could’ve ever happened to them. Why? Because it served as the ultimate wake-up call for them to get clean. That’s certainly the case with former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler…
In a recent interview on Mom, It’s Not Devil Music! Steven Adler opened up rather deliberately about a great many things ranging from his near death experiences and his ultimate wake-up call. Here is what he had to say…
“One day you’re on top of the world, and the next day you’re a nobody. The movie ‘American Satan’ is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to actual reality. The drugs were my downfall. One day I just went, ‘This isn’t cool. I don’t wanna do this [drugs] anymore.’ And I didn’t realize that if you’re doing heroin and then you stop doing it, you get violently sick – violently sick. Like, the inside of your bones ache – the inside of your every bone, it aches so bad and you just wanna die. And I called my manager and I said, ‘Dude, I’m so fucking sick. I don’t understand what’s going on.’ So he came and picked me up, he took me to this doctor, and the doctor gave me an opiate blocker. Well, you’re not supposed to take an opiate blocker while you have opiates in your system or you get even more violently sick. Three days go by, and I’m calling a doctor and I’m going, ‘What the fuck did you do to me?’ And, like, four days go by, and Slash called and said, ‘Well, we’re going in the studio to record ‘Civil War’.’ And I said, ‘Dude, I’m so sick. Please, can we just wait one more week? I’m so sick.’ And he said, ‘We can’t waste the money. We’ve gotta do this song.’ So I go in at A&M Records to record, and I’m so weak and sick. I did my best, but I had to play, like, 25 times. So they were getting frustrated. And I kept telling them, ‘I’m sick.’ And they kept saying, ‘No, you’re not. You’re just fucked up.’ And I said, ‘I’m not fucked up. I’m sick.’ And I got kicked out. I went from having a management, roadies, a band, agent, accountants – people all around me all the time – that I thought were my friends and had my back to literally, one day, I was all alone. I had nobody. I thought for sure I was gonna be one of those rock stars that, when they’re 27, they O.D. and die. The ’90s were the worst. The ’90s sucked for me. Once I got kicked out of GN’R, I had to sign this contract. They took everything from me. I didn’t know that. Then I had to take them to court. Losing them is what made me go off the end. I was gonna clean myself up, because I was just tired of it. I was just old and I didn’t like being sick and tired, so I went and jumped right in head first. I could have either said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go exercise and clean myself up and do this,’ but my heart was so broken that I couldn’t even think about doing that. All I could think about was, ‘I just wanna die.'”